It is well known to keep a milk bottle for a baby in a refrigerator and to heat the milk bottle in a microwave oven when the baby wakes up. This known method requires two devices and also requires both the baby and the parent to wait until the milk has reached the proper temperature. As babies generally are not appreciative of waiting and are perfectly capable of making this known, this method is far from ideal.
United States Patent Application US 2004/0140304 discloses a device for both chilling and warming a baby bottle. This known device utilizes a thermoelectric module, also known as Peltier element, both for chilling and warming. A clock circuit can be set to an activation or target time to automatically switch the device from a chilling mode to a warming mode at the activation time. A buzzer may sound when the target time has arrived. The known device can also manually be switched into the warming mode.
This known device has the disadvantage that the activation time must be known in advance. If the known device has the bottle ready before the baby is awake, and the parent is woken up by the device's buzzer, then the baby has to be woken up and will not be amused. If, however, the baby has already woken up and made her hunger known before the target time, then the parent has to manually switch the device into the warming mode and wait for the bottle to be ready while the baby is crying, leaving both the parent and the baby not amused.
International Patent Application WO 2013/093686 discloses an apparatus for monitoring a sleeping person and arranged for estimating the moment of waking up of the sleeping person. In an embodiment, a bottle heater may be started before a baby is about to wake up. The chilling of a bottle is however not disclosed in WO 2013/093686. In other words, the known apparatus is incapable of chilling the bottle before it is to be heated. In addition, the known apparatus is incapable of reversing the heating process in case a “false alarm” is produced and the baby fails to wake up, in which case the bottle may need to be chilled again.